When you start building your smart home, you eventually reach a point where you want to combine and automate the equipment you've purchased. You could get a hub Which smart home automation hub is best for you? Which Smart Hub for Home Automation is Best for You? For a while, people thought the idea was nothing more than a gimmick, but recent product launches have shown that smart home automation is starting to deliver on its promises. Read more . There are thousands of these on the market, each with its own inherent advantages and disadvantages. Alternatively, you can get a HomeSeer Smart Controller, or "HomeTroller".
The basic functionality of the HomeSeer system is that it allows you to automate your various smart home devices and set the conditions under which they do something. You can combine devices and control them remotely from anywhere in the world.
But wait, I hear you say. Isn't it basically a smart hub? Should you buy a smart hub now or wait a few years? Should you buy a Smart Hub now or wait a few years? Read more ?
Not if HomeSeer can help you. On its website, HomeSeer is adamant that it's not like one of the cloud-based smart hubs that have flooded the market in recent years. HomeSerers HomeTrollers are “Internet Independent”, and will continue to work if there is an outage at your ISP. HomeSeer also emphasizes the security benefits of having a system not tied to a potentially insecure service not controlled by the user.
There is another tangible benefit. Earlier this year, Revolv (a smart hub product acquired by Nest in 2013) was discontinued. The cloud servers that powered the hummus-tub boxes were shut down, rendering the devices completely useless.
Home Trollers are immune to this. Even if HomeSeer doesn't work, the drivers will still work as long as the hardware is still working. As a result, it could be argued that it has way more longevity than any other smart home hub on the market.
One problem with smart hubs in general is that they each support different types of devices. What can the HomeSeer offer interact with?
HomeSeer has an interesting strategy for device and service compatibility. First, there is the nomenclature used. Call integrations, “drivers ” and “plugins” indistinctly.
The cheapest HomeSeer model only supports five different drivers at the same time, and only those that are designed for the Linux version of the HomeSeer platform. The more expensive HomeSeer devices support an unlimited number of drivers, some built for Windows and some built for Linux.
Also, while many of these drivers are free to download and use, the vast majority are not . Premium controllers are monetized with a kind of trial software model. They are free to try for a limited period of time, but after that the user has to pay money. This is usually around $30 or $40, depending on the driver.
This may be off-putting to some, especially when you've gotten used to the extensive (and free) device support offered by Samsung SmartThings and Wink. But it makes sense when you consider that HomeSeer supports a huge Number of highly specialized protocols and devices..
It would be prohibitively expensive to support these devices for free, but this pricing model means it's feasible for HomeSeer to cater to almost everyone.
Most of the mainstream stuff is free. You won't have to pay to connect HomeSeer with your Z-Wave, Insteon or Sonos devices. But if you want to connect it to something more exotic, like an Arduino Introduction to Arduino:A Beginner's Guide Introduction to Arduino:A Beginner's Guide Arduino is a flexible and easy-to-use hardware-based open source electronics prototyping platform. software. It is aimed at artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Read more or a DD-WRT router What is DD-WRT and how can you turn your router into a super router? What is DD-WRT and how can you turn your router into a super router? In this article, I'm going to show you some of the coolest features of DD-WRT which, if you decide to use it, will allow you to transform your own router into the super router of... Read More Q>
Additionally, HomeSeer's HomeTrollers work with IFTTT. This allows you to connect it to other online services such as weather alerts and other smart home devices that the HomeTroller doesn't natively support via a controller. It's also compatible with Amazon Echo, allowing you to control and automate your smart home with your voice.
The fascinating thing about the line of HomeTrollers available is that on paper they are essentially full-fledged computers .
There are currently five HomeTroller devices sold by the company. The cheapest is the Zee S2, which costs $199.99. It uses an unprecedented 900MHz quad-core CPU (probably ARM or Intel Atom, but I couldn't find anything online to confirm), and it has 1GB of RAM.
But as your budget increases, so does the power of the controllers, to the point where they're virtually indistinguishable from low-end PCs.
The SEL HomeTroller and SEL Pro [no longer available] come with a 1.58 GHz dual-core Celeron CPU. The cheapest model has 2 GB of RAM, while the most expensive has 4 GB.
The crème de la crème of the HomeTroller line is the SES 6 and SES 6 Pro [No Longer Available]. These are quite expensive, going for $899.95 and $1,195.95. These come with a 1.80GHz Celeron CPU and 2GB and 4GB of RAM respectively. The extra "sexy" Probably necessary, since they run Windows 7 Embedded.
Plus, they come with all the usual ports you'd expect on a standard PC, including VGA and DVI (depending on model), HDMI, and audio jacks.
The decision to use off-the-shelf PC hardware instead of a single-board, custom ARM setup will leave many stumped. Typically, smart home hubs are designed to use as little electricity as possible and use as lean hardware as possible while still running smoothly. HomeTrollers break these conventions.
But to me, it makes a lot of sense. HomeSeer is not a hub. You don't depend on a cloud server to do the hard work. It does all of its own calculations, programming, and processing locally. This requires more capable hardware.
HomeSeer is unashamedly geared towards the higher end of the market, both in terms of price and technical prowess. Rather than one of the smartphone hubs for consumer-facing, app-based apps, setting up a HomeSeer system requires a bit more thought.
Fortunately, HomeSeer has a thriving online community. It also regularly hosts webinars, which are posted on its official YouTube channel.
Unlike many smart home hubs on the market, HomeSeer allows users to create their own personalized app experiences through the HSTouch Designer.
This will no doubt be attractive to any business using HomeSeer to create personalized smart homes, as it will allow them to introduce their own branding into the app experience. However, HSTouch Designer costs $199.99, and is therefore completely unaffordable for most regular users.
If you are looking for a versatile and robust system to automate your various smart home devices, HomeSeer is for you. Sure, it's a bit more complicated than some of the offerings on the market right now. It is also a bit more expensive..
But you got what you paid for. HomeSeer is powerful. It allows you to do it however you want. Since it's not cloud-dependent, it'll work when your internet goes down, and you don't have to worry about someone taking down cloud servers like Nest did with Revolv.
For me, it's a no-brainer.
Have you used HomeSeer before? What do you think about that? Tell me in the comments below..
